The Blind Writer

To be sure, the stories that introduce the collection are all wonderfully wrought, taut in their narrative precision, and do have that Chekhovian sensibility that Pandya himself references at one point in ‘The Blind Writer. Asian American Literature Fans

The finale of the collection is the novella The Blind Writer, a roller coaster of emotional baggage with its passive aggressive characters who form a decidedly intriguing love triangle. Told from the perspective of a struggling young writer, Pandya takes us through so much in such little time. . . . [The] collection is a must-read for those who want glimpses of the Indian American experience, filled with angst and ease, struggle and survival, success and loss. Saadia Faruqi, The Aerogram

The stories are spurred along by Pandya’s gift for quiet, laconic observation that ranges from wry and ironic to snide or absurd. . . . The novella, from which the book takes its name, packs a novel’s worth of writing into the book’s second half. Rather than seeming short, it instead comes across as lean and spare, just as long as it need be, but no longer. . . . Each of the components is finely-tuned; together, they form a composite whole. I don’t suppose many people read short fiction very often; this collection is a reminder why one should. Peter Gordon, The Asian Review of Books

[Pandya’s] greatest strength is the prose, and the delicious and well-crafted morsels he drops along the way. . . . We can only hope that Pandya continues to push the creative envelope by delving into his cultural past, but not to share the common tropes that many have come to associate with the immigrant voice; rather, Pandya’s gift is in his ability to pencil in characters whose ethnicity is only part of their story. In this way, Pandya’s work allows us to come full circle as the children of immigrants, and embrace our Americana, predicated as it is, on our otherness. Shyam K. Sriram, PopMatters

Sameer Pandya’s stories are fine-tuned and precise, and carry an emotional load that breaks open inside us in ways that are, by turns, delicate and explosive. Gretel Ehrlich, author of Facing the Wave

Pandya writes with grace and authority about characters revealed to us through their fears and dreams, mistakes and successes, longing and regrets. Keith Scribner, author of The Oregon Experiment, professor of English and creative writing, Oregon State University